Kamala Harris simply cannot escape her ties to Biden and his disastrous administration
She came, she saw, she flopped.Kamala Harris had one job Tuesday night — to separate herself from the last four years of a failed administration and make a persuasive case that the next four years under her leadership would be like night and day. Achieving both goals would pose a challenge to even the most gifted and sincere candidate.Because Harris is neither, her claim that she’s ready for a promotion fell flat. No thanks, no sale.She certainly gave it her best shot.
Although her speech was predictably heavy on the dangers Donald Trump supposedly represents, it was otherwise good enough to serve as a closing argument, and her delivery was nearly flawless.She sounded strong and looked almost as confident as when she delivered her acceptance speech at the party convention in Chicago.But a lot has changed since then and Tuesday offered no escape from the two shadows looming over her.One is Joe Biden, arguably the worst president in modern times and among the most unpopular.To this day, Harris cannot say what she would do differently from Biden, which simultaneously makes her a blank slate and a full partner in a disastrous term. Even the setting of her speech — the Washington Ellipse, with the White House in the background — was a reminder of that baggage. It was an odd choice, with Biden just hundreds of yards away, perhaps watching her on television try to run away from him and their administration. She can’t get away with it because she often concedes she was the last person in the room with him for such terrible decisions as the deadly bug-out from Afghanistan.Worse, she won’t admit a single mistake they made, which is an affront to the many millions of voters unhappy with the administration’s tenure, especially the Gold Star families and those who lost loved ones to illegal-migrant killers.The other shadow looming over her, of course, is Trump, whose presidency was a roaring success compared to the last four years.He has compounded her p...